Estate planning is important, and it is just as important to make sure a qualified financial advisor reviews your estate plan on a regular basis to ensure that as laws change, your intentions can still be carried out.

After a death in the family, it is not uncommon for survivors to squabble over how an estate is distributed. It is also not uncommon for the heirs to be surprised at how federal and state law can alter the amount of money they receive. Reuters reported on how what happened to one California family offered “life lessons for the masses.”

When it comes to financial planning, Kathleen Rehl, Phd, CFP defines ‘magical thinking’ as notion that if you don’t speak of something it isn’t real.

That phrase also appears in the title of the critically acclaimed book “The Year of Magical Thinking,” in which Joan Didion chronicles the suddenness of losing her child and her husband in a very short time period. A New York Times reviewer wrote that Didion’s novel is “not a downer” despite the circumstances it describes.

Fall is a time of year when people go back to school and even when you aren’t returning to school, it can be useful to adopt a more academic frame of mind when it comes to financial planning. Even if you work with a Fee-Only financial advisor, it would help to be more conversant about money management so that you can participate fully in discussions of your finances.

Here are just a few financial ABCs to ponder:

Assets What kinds of financial assets do you currently have? If you don’t know that assets include stocks, bonds, and bank …

When you are embarking on a major endeavor (going to college, buying a house, planning a wedding), doing some financial planning before you start to spend can help you to put costs into perspective and keep you from overspending.

MSN Careers has an interesting look on what some people jokingly refer to as the “wedding industrial complex.” Rather than bemoaning excess or pointing out some of the pricey (and not strictly necessary) ways you could spend a lot on a wedding, MSN Careers asked, “How long will it take to pay off your wedding?“ As more people have …